


like gears in a machine

by mcmeekin



Series: let me go home [1]
Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers
Genre: Gen, Grid Theory, Morphin Grid, i mean i guess this is a grid theory since it's never stated that the power does this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2336729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/pseuds/mcmeekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say you can't go home again.</p><p>A look at the friendship of the original five and how the Power changes everything and nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like gears in a machine

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a Megaforce episode, actually. RoboKnight says it when he's being amazed by the team or something. It occurred to me when he said it that a ranger team has never worked badly together (like they all are just automatically in sync in battle) so I came up with an explanation.  
> All mistakes are my own.

If she’s honest with herself, she can’t remember a time when the five of them weren't friends.

It was one of those “our moms were best friends before we were born therefore we were obligated to hang out with each other for the first five years of our lives so here we are” things. Her mom likes to tell the story of her climbing out of her pack-‘n-play and climbing into Billy’s when she was barely one year old because she didn't like to nap alone. It’s weird because she feels absolutely certain that she and Billy would not speak to one another otherwise. She also would never have looked twice at Zack in the hallway at school had she not stolen his pacifier countless times when they were young. Trini wouldn't even be on her radar if they hadn't shared dolls as children. Okay, so maybe she and Jason would still have run in the same circles if she hadn't _insisted_ to him that girls could play football at age six, but it wouldn't be the same.

They have a comfortable friendship; they all walk to Ernie’s together after school, they all live within walking distance of one another, and they speak in the classes they have together, but beyond that there isn't much they have in common. But it’s like they have this silent understanding that they are all best friends, they have each other’s backs, but they don’t make a big deal about it.

Sometimes she thinks the Power reprogrammed them. It sounds like they’re machines when she thinks about it that way, but it’s the only way she knows how to phrase what happens to them after they accept the morphers from Zordon. They change. Their friendship changes.

Some of it, she knows, is just the situation forcing them to become closer. No one else knows what it’s like to feel the full force of a monster, a thing that was just supposed to exist in nightmares and under your bed, hitting you right where your heart is, to feel the sparks fly off your armor, and to think _this is it; this is the time it’ll fail me_ and then to get back up and charge back toward the thing you’re more scared of than anything you ever saw in the horror films you and Zack weren't supposed to watch when you were ten. No one else can even conceptualize what it’s like for Rita Repulsa to have a personal vendetta against you, to want _you_ dead, to want to ruin your entire life and to torture and kill everyone you touch, everyone you love. No one can imagine going through this and then pretending like nothing’s wrong, like you didn't break you ribs for the fourth time yesterday, like your only interest in space witches is if their monster is attacking you as a random person in the street, like you don’t fear for your life every damn moment of the day, like you don’t subconsciously push everyone away from you that’s not your team because you fear that you’ll wake up tomorrow, and they’ll be dead because of their association with you. No one but your team understands. So some of it’s just the situation.

Some of it, she also knows, is the necessity. Of course she goes to Jason more and more for advice; he’s her leader, and he makes good decisions. Of course she talks to Zack more; he’s great with helping her brush up on her fighting and adding to her skill sets. Of course she talks to Billy more; he has to explain to her how if she tilts her arm at a _slightly_ different angle she can be up to forty point seven two percent more precise with her bow than she has been (she’s slowly learning to speak Billy, and she doesn't miss the gleam of pride in his eyes when she says a word she heard him use). Of course she spends more time with Trini; she’s the only other secret superhero _female_ that Kimberly has on hand, and they have important things to discuss like the gossip column of the newspaper theorizing on why only one female ranger has a skirt (they laugh for hours). Of course they all have more sleepovers, more smoothies at Ernie’s, more time spent together because sometimes you just need to talk about the fact that you kill every day, and no one but the five of you knows it. So it makes sense.

But at the same time it doesn't. It doesn't make sense how she can _sense_ orders before Jason gives them in battle, sometimes negating the need for him to give them. It doesn't make sense how Kim knows when Trini needs her at her back and when she’s got it covered without even looking in her teammate’s direction. It doesn't make sense when she leaps into the air, not sure what she’s doing, only to find Zack already standing in perfect position, waiting for her to use his shoulders as a springboard and fire her bow. It doesn't make sense how Billy can just say her name, and she immediately knows what he wants from her, whether it be for her to roll out of the way before her head gets taken off or to grab his hand and swing around in a circle, taking out putties as she goes. None of it makes sense.

She might have excused it away if it just happened while they were morphed. God knows the Power makes weird changes to them, including flawless archery skills and the ability to fly a pink pterodactyl. So if it would just happen while they’re morphed, she would let it go.

But it’s doesn't.

Her television is messed up, and Billy shows up five minutes later asking if she needs help fixing it without her telling him anything is wrong. She shows up at Trini’s house, not really knowing why, only to find that Trini was just about to call her to ask if she wanted to help her bake a cake. She’s really craving one of Ernie’s specials as she finishes her gymnastics routine for the day; she comes back from the locker room to find that Zack already ordered her one. When Jason starts answering questions she only asks in her head, she starts getting a little freaked out.

And it’s not just that, not just the mind magic and synchronizations.

Before the Power, she was sort of protective over Billy. They all were; he was an easy target. Bulk and Skull seemed to be the only ones to ignore the gang’s clear ‘do not touch’ signs hanging on Billy. Before, she would just mouth off to them and maybe kick them once for good measure. Now, she sees the look cross Bulk’s face, the look she’s come to associate with the emotions of exasperation and mild annoyance from her because it means he’s going to pick on Billy, and the look stirs the most intense rage she’s ever felt inside her. She sees red. In five seconds, she’s already analyzed every possible way to kill him with minimal inconvenience and effort, already planned every possible way to make him scream and cry for his mom, and has come down to the best options all without even realizing she’s doing it. That’s the scary part, how unconscious it is. She feels it in her very being, the need to protect her teammates, the need to keep them all safe and unharmed. It’s a feeling, an adrenaline rush, which she associates with putty fights and monsters-of-the-week, not with two lowlife bullies. But the Power doesn't distinguish between threats to her teammates. She catches herself doing it to every girl that approaches Zack, every new student who joins Jason’s karate class, every person Trini tutors, or looks at, or talks to, or stands near: she analyzes them, finds all possible weaknesses, and assess threat-level all within a first glance. And she knows it’s not really her, she _knows,_ but it scares her, the violent-default that she’s become. And she knows she’s not the only one. She sees it in her teammates’ eyes when Billy finds a new girl of his dreams or when Kimberly introduces them to the kid she’s babysitting; they can’t help it.

She thinks the Power knows how potentially dangerous this default can be and so it sort of leaves red rangers out of the loop. Or maybe Jason is just naturally good at fighting those instincts and being a leader. Because sometimes, they can’t help the violence that rises in them like a tidal wave, the need to protect and defend, to crush and destroy. Those are the times, the times when Zack steps forward looking to everyone else like he’s about to tell Bulk and Skull off for teasing Billy, times when Kim knows how calm she looks on the outside when talking to an unmorphed evil green ranger, those are the times when Jason knows, knows to put a hand on Zack’s shoulder to keep him from snapping Bulk’s neck, knows to take Kim’s hand to force her to relax it from the fist it was forming, knows that his teammates sometimes need protection from themselves.

There are other things too, things that suggest the Power has changed her biological make-up, like the fact that she automatically scans for potential weapons and escape routes when she enters a room, the fact that her superficial bruises fade in thirty minutes and her broken limbs heal in a matter of hours, the fact that she starts considering all strangers potential threats. The Power affects her in profound ways, but none as profound as the bond she forms with her teammates.

And maybe the Power is messing with the logical part of her brain too because on some level she believes that it really will be the five of them until Rita’s gone. Or the six of them. She’s not complaining about the new addition; the more the merrier. She just doesn't expect any of the five of them to leave. They can’t, as far as she’s concerned. They’re deeply bonded, irrevocably bound together until the Earth is safe. The reprograming is permanent, as far as she’s concerned.

Yeah. What a load of bullshit.

This is the part when she’s suddenly grateful that the Power’s covering her ass. She’s almost glad that she’s wrong; it isn't permanent. She feels like someone ripped out part of her brain, replaced it with someone else’s, and then tried to convince her that it was still hers. The Power forces her to adapt to the new fighting styles of her new teammates. She knows when Aisha’s in trouble and when she’s fine, just like with her other team. She gets flashes of white-hot rage when she sees Adam being made fun of. It even saves her some major embarrassment when she shouts for Jason’s help in the middle of a fight and it somehow comes out as her yelling for Rocky. But, man, does it mess with her mind.

She knows Tommy doesn't feel it; he misses the others, sure, but he didn't steal their Ninja Turtle figurines when they were younger (she suspects there might still be a Donatello buried in her backyard somewhere). And Billy… she’s not sure she can describe what Billy’s going through. He’ll say something in Billy, and Rocky will ask for a translation, and he won’t say anything for a good seven seconds before he _remembers_ , remembers that there’s no one there to help him. Kimberly can catch him a number of times, but nobody’s perfect. He starts using simpler terms, she notices. She’s seen him walk down the street the wrong way before, heading for a house that only Zack’s parents live in anymore. They get closer, she and Billy do, closer in a weird way, in an, “I won’t forget them if you won’t” way.

And it eventually gets better. She adjusts to her new friends, she falls into sync with them, she loves and hates it again, and everything feels normal.

Until it doesn't.

Until she’s losing her powers, and she’s never missed her old team more than right now but they’re not here, it’s just her and Billy, and even Tommy starts feeling like a poor substitute for them, and all she wants to do it sit in Jason’s basement surrounded by blankets and bad movies and Trini and Zack and Jason and Billy and just know that they are always there for her, and _why aren't they here for her?_

So of course she goes to the Pan Globals. She tricks herself into thinking that she won’t, makes all the appropriate protests when offered the Florida gig, but she keeps thinking about machines and reprogramming, about betrayal and friendship. She talks to Billy about it, asking him what to do. She makes sure that he knows that he can leave too, that Zordon would be okay with it. He asks her where he would go, sounding almost bitter. He tells her that, as long as he’s in Angel Grove, this is what he has to do. And she’s never felt more like she’s betraying someone than in the moment when she hands Katherine her power coin.

It is years later before she sees him again. She’s winning a gold medal and beaming and crying, and she feels it, feels it like a tickle in the back of her mind, like the sound of her name being yelled in a battle all those years ago, like the feeling she used to get that Trini needed her, that Zack was hurt, that Jason needed his back covered, that Billy wanted to warn her. She looks up into the crowd and locks eyes with them, and she thinks about machines.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of a series analyzing different team dynamics and the idea of home as people not a place. I have two others written and waiting to be edited, etc. but beyond that I have no idea how many of these I will write.


End file.
